


Parallels

by keita52



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Feelings, Gen, M9 meets VM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-04-29 23:18:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14483400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keita52/pseuds/keita52
Summary: The Mighty Nein each get a piece of oddly pertinent advice from a stranger.





	1. Chapter 1

Nott’s porcelain mask slips in the street one day. She was too distracted by the man who had walked past her, his coat practically covered in shiny objects. She reaches to the ground, hastily picks it up, furtively looks around.

A hand rests on her shoulder, and she jumps. Oddly, though, the hand is from about her own height. She looks over and sees a gnome in full plate armor, blonde hair pulled back into a bun. The gnome smiles. “Your family doesn’t have to define you, not if you don’t want it to.”

* * *

Caleb puts his hands into a loaf of bread, just as he had shown Jester and Beau weeks ago. It’s cold, and he’s hungry, and it’s a hard habit to break even when they have more than enough coin to throw around now. He looks at the bookshop he was planning to enter, seeing a white-haired man in a fine coat standing there. Caleb pauses, decides to wait for the man to leave.

When the white-haired man comes out, he seems to notice Caleb there. He pauses, and says, “Your pain is part of you. Make it work for you.”

* * *

Jester bounces through the street festival, depositing pamphlets to the Traveler wherever she can. Amidst the bright colors and the hubbub, she’s almost invisible. Like she used to be.

She stumbles, and is caught by an older woman with – antlers? Jester does her best to memorize this sight; she’s sure that it will make an excellent addition to her collection of drawings. The woman smiles, her face seeming ageless somehow. “You’ve got friends now. As long as you have their back, they’ll have yours.”

* * *

Beau looks at the letter in her hands that somehow found its way to her, and balls up her fists in anger. She wishes she hadn’t read it. She wishes she could cut herself off entirely, and fears that isn’t possible.

A dark-haired woman – half-elf, she guesses – steps out in front of her. Beau’s first instinct is an angry retort, but she thinks about what Fjord might say, and bites her lip. The momentary delay gives the older woman time to speak. “You can be more than what your father wanted of you.”

* * *

Yasha sits in a bar with a tankard of ale before her, just kind of staring at it. She thinks about Xhorhas and everyone that she left behind there. She thinks about her new friends, some of whom seem more accepting than others, and tries not to wonder when they’re going to ask her a question she isn’t ready to answer.

Someone sits down next to her. Her eyes are already narrowed as she turns to look at the goliath. She’s never seen anyone like him. She didn’t know goliaths could grow beards. The goliath downs his own tankard of ale. “It’s who you choose to associate with that really matters,” he tells her.

* * *

Molly stops to admire a street performance. A pair of gnomes seem to be engaging in some kind of friendly duet, each of them telling a more exaggerated story than the last. Molly can definitely appreciate a good story.

He pulls a coin from his pouch and tosses it into the hat the gnomes left out. The male gnome removes his hat with an elaborate flourish and bows to Molly. “Others might put labels on you, but you’re the only one that gets to decide who you are.”

* * *

Fjord listens to their stories, one by one. The stranger who stopped them and told them something that seemed unusually piercing, unusually meaningful. It would be easy to laugh that all off as some kind of coincidence, but he’s starting to think that sometimes coincidence isn’t.

That night, in his dreams, it’s not the giant face of his patron that he sees. It’s a half-elf, clad all in black with raven’s wings outspread from his back. “Your patron might have gifted you that power, but you’re the one that gets to do something with it.”

He wakes up to a raven on his chest, beady eyes staring, before it lets out a caw and flies away.


	2. Chapter 2

Caduceus looks around the streets of Zadash, still trying to get the taste of “whiskey” out of his mouth, then back to the group that calls themselves the Mighty Nein. Odd name. As far as he can tell, there were never nine of them. But there are a lot of odd things about the five other people that he’s fallen in with. No, six; that Aasimar is definitely a part of this, even if she did run off when they stopped at that grave.

This isn’t how he expected things to go. To be fair, his world had been so small until they showed up that it would have been nearly impossible to predict what would happen once he left the graveyard. He still feels like this is a rather improbable set of circumstances, and he’s painfully aware of how much he  _doesn’t_  know.

A hand rests on his shoulder. Caduceus turns, looks down into the face of a human male with blond hair. Some sort of odd mechanical construct stands behind him. “If nothing else,” he says, “you’re going to learn a lot from them.”


	3. Voices on the wind

It’s a long road between Alfield and Felderwin, and the Mighty Nein are taking turns on watch. Something’s different in the air tonight; Fjord can feel it. Like they’re all being watched somehow. He’s instantly put in mind of the time that everyone met a stranger in the streets who told them something relevant.

He can feel a kind of presence behind him, the sense of a well-dressed man whose white hair seems at odds with the still-youthful face.  _You got what you wanted; you got your answers, you got more power. Now what?_

Besides Fjord, Yasha shivers and pulls her cloak that much tighter. The wind blows a tumble of leaves and petals across her path, and she thinks of Zuella. As she does so often.

And like Fjord, though she doesn’t know it, there’s a presence behind her. A tall woman whose face seems ageless, a bright mantle over her shoulders.  _How long,_  she seems to whisper,  _will you let your loss be the thing that defines you?_

* * *

Later, as Nott and Caleb step up, they both shiver with a gust of wind that passes by the edge of the campsite. They’re both used to it, by now, and they take some comfort from what warmth they can feel from the campfire behind them, and each other’s presence.

Caleb is still badly rattled by the near-miss with Yussah, a million thoughts running through his mind. It’s perhaps not too surprising that he fails to notice that one isn’t truly his. He thinks he’s imagining the tall Goliath speaking to him, a man who is his opposite in nearly every way.  _That self-destructive voice? Yeah, that’ll take everyone else down with you, too. But it’s not too late to do something about it._

Nott, meanwhile, is wondering why she keeps seeing a vision of a half-elf woman, in fine clothes, a woman who seems to have everything. The sound of children’s laughter seems to echo behind the woman.  _When is it enough? When will all the power, all the gold, all the shiny baubles make up for what lies in your past?_

* * *

Jester and Beau have the final watch, both giving tired nods to Nott and Caleb as they step up. The sky is just beginning to brighten with hints of color, a muted sunrise trying to push back the darkness.

Jester ruffles Nugget’s fur, still pleased beyond words to be reunited with the blink dog — no longer a puppy. She’s sad that she missed watching him grow, but she knows there’s more to come, and besides, she’s never sad for long. She swears she can hear a soft laugh, not like the ones from the Traveler. More full of light and life, emanating from a gnome woman whose hair seems to blaze a pure white in this pre-dawn darkness.  _They look to you to keep their spirits up. Hold to that joy. Hold to every moment of happiness you can find. You never know when you’ll need it._

Beau resists the urge to rub at her arms for warmth, hoping in vain that the sun will rise faster, that they could move closer to the campfire. It still bothers her that no one believes that she told the truth, that everyone thinks Caduceus is just trying to bolster her spirits. She, too, hears a soft laugh, from a throat that has laughed often. Flashes of a gnome, a man of pure showmanship.   _Not so easy when the lies are stripped away from you, is it?_

* * *

Besides Fjord, it’s only Caduceus that gets any sort of insight into what’s going on. He feels the presence of another deity lingering over the camp as they all break it, his friends each looking as though they have a lot more on their mind than they did the night before. He senses a porcelain mask and raven’s wings, an impossibly immortal presence. Someone, no, two someones, who were once mortal. One far more recently than the other.

It’s the more recent one that speaks to him, a man with hair as dark as the wings that sprout from his back.  _Faith takes us all strange places,_  he says.  _Continue to give her your trust, and she will show you the way._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written before Episode 49 and the backstory revelations therein.
> 
> I swear the "complete" status wasn't supposed to be this misleading. I just went to reblog the original and started thinking about how much each character had gone through since then, and ... fic happened.


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